


Believing

by JoJo



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s04e16 90lbs of Trouble, Gen, Implied Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some charades are just too real for comfort...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Believing

**Author's Note:**

> posted to BCL May 2006
> 
> NB This could be read a number of ways, including as a death story. Just so you know...

Up until the moment of contact, all is well. 

An elevated heartrate, just as he gets out of the car, but nothing he has not felt a hundred times before. Behind the wheel, Damon is seduced by Hutch's Eddie Carlyle, believing that icewater must surely float through the veins of a man so willing to burn a cop on the sidewalk in broad daylight. For a moment back in Schiller's office, staring down the barrel of a gun, Hutch had thought his whole Eddie Carlyle charade was unravelling. He had found the presence of mind to turn things around quickly, to run with the new scenario, and it is what he needs Starsky to do now. Look at him, understand what is happening, and run with it. 

Hutch gets a firm hold of his arm from behind and swings him round. He is aware that he has only a couple of seconds to communicate with his partner, and it will all have to be in the touch. Under the hat, behind the shades, his face will reveal nothing. But Starsky, of course, is possessed of the sharpest sixth sense of anyone Hutch knows. Give him words and he might ask questions... but make it a touch... Hutch's fingers grip down to the bone. 

_I'm here to kill you, Starsk... and my life depends on it, buddy, so when you go down, go down good. Make me believe it._

He can feel how warm Starsky is, radiating the sunshine trapped under his jacket. As the ugly magnum presses against abdominal muscles they suck themselves backwards in an attempt at self-protection, and that makes sense to Hutch. What lies behind -- the spleen, the stomach, the spine -- should be inviolate. This will be a way to kill a man swiftly -- minimum noise, maximum damage. Too much blood will run away too quickly. He will be dead before the ambulance arrives. 

In that couple of seconds, Starsky looks from the gun and into the shades, not wanting to die. Hutch knows the eyes. They belong to the Starsky who lost his doughnut in an unfair contest this morning, someone Hutch does not expect to see. He is anticipating the other Starsky, the one who has been smarming and charming in the lounge of the Miramar all afternoon. The one who will understand. 

_OK, help me out here because we can't stop now. Schiller has to believe this, or you're going to be scraping me off the walls._

There can be no hesitation. He truly is Eddie Carlyle as far as that goes, and pulls the trigger, point blank. He has never in his life fired a gun at point blank range into a man's body. The vibration goes right through him. 

Starsky folds in the middle as the chamber empties. The empty chamber, emptying its burning air, the _thwump_ of the silencer scorching the shirt front like a branding iron. 

There was no need for a vest, because there would be no bullet. 

But he has felt pain. Hutch knows the eyes. 

_Don't look at me like that. I haven't shot you. There's no bullet. Think I would forget to take them out?_

Those eyes are desperate, stranded on his face. For Starsky, believing it is easy. This seems real to him. 

_It's not real, Starsk. I haven't shot you._

But he is surprised by the weight falling through his fingers. Starsky is heading for the sidewalk at speed. Hutch wants to catch him, hold him up, not let him go. 

The falling is just an act. This can't be real, and there can be no blood. Hutch lets go, feels the warmth washing away, the contact breaking, and he has no choice but to walk. He cannot look back. Already it feels too raw, too visceral. They will not be able to re-visit it, even from a safe distance, buoyed by beer and the proximity of the other. Instead it will become the stuff of night terrors, a sub-conscious trawl through unspeakable fears when they are weary and alone. 

Starsky is down on the sidewalk as he leaves. The wail of the woman is familiar, the wild shock of a witness to violence. She believes what she has seen, Damon believes it, and the gathering crowd all believe it -- but that is the power of the artifice they have employed, nothing more. Starsky is alive and well. To confirm it, Hutch seeks out the wing mirror as they round the corner, speeding away from the scene that grows ever more chaotic. All he can see are people bending forwards, people on their knees. Starsky is still down. Up the street, as they decelerate into the traffic, Damon sends a satisfied look his way. A police siren has joined the charade. They both hear it bearing down on the Miramar. Shortly after, the car is rocked by the speed of an ambulance travelling past in the opposite direction, at the breakneck pace it would need to reach a casualty with only minutes to live. 

He must not let Starsky's face, or the sounds, convince him. He must carry on knowing better, for he has his own life to look after. If he believes -- for even one second -- then there would be no need. 

_You really didn't have to carry on as long as this, Starsk, but thanks anyway... it was a good fall._

Hutch peels off his gloves, sweating. He straightens the scarf, plucked from Carlyle's hotel closet. It is silky and expensive and he stares down at it for a long time, wondering if he has looked at it properly before. Sunlight flashing into the car through trees trails a pattern across it like tiny bubbles of blood. 

An immediate stress migraine hits him over his right eye as he realises. 

And believes. 


End file.
